Monday, 30 January 2017

Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France, Evelyne Lever

Lever’s easy-to-read account of the infamous French Queen, Marie
Antoinette, brings her story to life almost as a novel might. The reader is led
into sympathy for the young Queen, having been sent to a foreign country at a
tender age and being forced to survive in the trying environment of Versailles
in such a public marriage. Lever details how trying Antoinette found her
situation and how she longed for some sense of normality, creating a haven for
herself at Trianon. She disliked the constant rituals of royalty and found
public duties tiresome, leading her to break with some traditions.
Surprisingly, however, she did not push against one of the more invasive
customs – that French queens had to give birth publicly in order to prove the
legitimacy of their child.

In all other senses when it came to her children she does not seem
to have wished to follow in the distant relationship expected from
royals. Lever paints her as maternal, with a desire to be active in her
children’s life, and even wished to breastfeed them herself. Her apparent
motherly instincts seem at odds with those of her own mother, who is depicted
as manipulative, using emotion against her children in order to manoeuvre them into
positions of influence. Political dominance seems to have been a greater
concern to her than her own children’s happiness, not uncommon at this time,
but exaggerated in her family. Indeed, Marie Antoinette seems to have received
very little affection from her family at large; her tragic figure imprisoned
near the end of her life, believing her family would save her when in fact they
had no intention to help.

Marie Antoinette is often vilified for her excesses and political
ineptitude, but this biography paints a softer picture – one of a young woman
thrust into court life without sufficient training to succeed. A woman whose
intuition about the views of the people of France was severely lacking, but a
woman of heart. One can’t help but think she would have thrived in a more
domestic situation. Lever’s biography is unlikely to satisfy many academics, and
the wider political and social context of events is all but absent, resulting
in a somewhat misleading, half-formed version of events. The storming of
Versailles especially reads more like a novel than an historical study, but the
book is accessible and gives a sense of life as experienced by her.